In such cageless bearings, at least one of the track surfaces generally has shoulders or recesses serving to guide the rotary bodies and to prevent lateral excursions thereof. To facilitate the assembly of the rings and the balls or rollers, however, one track surface is unobstructed on at least one side of the array. In use, alignment of the rings is usually insured by their mountings on a shaft and a housing, for example; prior to its emplacement in the machine for which it is intended, however, the assembly must be held together by other means.
Thus, German published specification No. 2,155,290 shows a cageless roller bearing provided with retaining rings for this purpose. Such retaining rings, conforming e.g. to German standards DIN 421 and 422, are relatively cheap to produce and easy to mount in the case of small bearings. With larger assemblies, however, their costs rise considerably and substantial force is required for installing them. The price factor is particularly significant with odd-size bearings for which mass production is out of the question.
Bearings equipped with cages for their balls or rollers have heretofore been provided with grooves in their track surfaces engageable by extensions of these cages. See, in this connection, German Pat. No. 1,056,881 as well as our copending application Ser. No. 850,804, filed on Oct. 27, 1977, disclosing an improved construction of that type.
There are many instances, again particularly in the case of larger bearings, where the use of a roller or ball cage would be prohibitively expensive; such cages are also undesirable in cases where large loads are to be supported, calling for the emplacement of as many balls or rollers as possible in the annular gap between the two track surfaces.